It's been over a year since our last Capture the Flag
competition, and in the meanwhile we've fielded dozensofinquiries
about when the next one's coming. The wait is almost over: CTF3 will
be here a week from today.

This time around, we're trying something a bit different. Rather than
being about security, CTF3 will focus on distributed systems
engineering. You'll learn how to build fault-tolerant, performant
software while playing around with a bunch of cool cutting-edge
technologies. Like with previous CTFs, our goal is to give you
hands-on exposure to interesting engineering problems that you
normally only get to read about. If you've been wanting to really grok things like Paxos/Raft,
DDOS
prevention, distributed
search, or Bitcoin (and maybe
even bit
twiddling), now's your chance.

As always, we're building this CTF for programmers of all skill levels
and backgrounds. Even if the above sounds daunting, you should still
give it a shot — you might be surprised by what you can
accomplish. For those looking for some competition, there will be
leaderboards where you can compete against your friends or the CTF
community at large.

Want to meet and hack alongside your fellow CTFers in person? While
the main gathering will once again be based on IRC (check back for
details next week), we'll also be hosting kickoff events in San Francisco, Boston, and
London.